


given a chance

by hattalove



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Cats, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, ish, liam is a life coach, louis is going through a minor quarter life crisis, they work at a call centre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-05 18:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20493056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hattalove/pseuds/hattalove
Summary: He’s got—wavy hair, curling at the ends, a mop of it that his headphones push into his face, and the way he holds himself, the way the overhead lighting paints him paler than he must really be except for the colour of his eyes, the pink of his lips—His shirt is a vintage one, a 1972 Led Zeppelin tour that seems to genuinely be from the 70s, no cartoon pickle in sight. In this context, that too is attractive.or, louis starts a dead-end job with every intention of quitting as soon as possible. he ends up getting rather more than he'd bargained for.





	given a chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [runaway_train](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runaway_train/gifts).

> hey so first of all IM REALLY SORRY this didn't follow the prompt exactly because as it turns out setting a ~mystery in a call centre is kind of difficult?? but i hope you still like this i'm a little rusty but i promise i Tried 
> 
> (also i have worked many bizarre places but never a call centre and the people i've worked with who had worked in call centres always just told me that they had scheduled bathroom breaks and those were the worst so. a bunch of this is about bathroom breaks i'm sorry)

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about your twenties: they’re a load of shit. The only thing worse than being in your twenties is the abject horror of realising that you’re approaching your thirties and you cannot do anything to stop it.

Incidentally, Louis currently falls into both categories, and he’s never felt it more acutely than walking through the fancy sliding doors at his brand new job and finding himself standing in front of a room of infants. 

(Rationally, he knows they’re adults. But he also knows that someone over by the window is wearing a Rick and Morty t-shirt, and there are more empty Starbucks cups in the room than there are people.) 

“Morning,” says Niall, the person who interviewed him, who is younger than Louis, and also his superior, and also way too upbeat for seven fucking thirty. “Welcome to the ranks.” 

He’s grinning, his arms stretched out wide, clearly going for jovial. He’s also whispering, which ruins the overall effect a little bit. 

“Thanks,” Louis says, and cramps his mouth into a smile-like shape. “My desk?” 

Chin up. Stand straight. Say as few words as possible. Hydrate, and don’t rush your lunch. 

Liam told him to do that last one. Louis didn’t even bring lunch with him. 

At best, this is only going to take a few weeks. He’s got other job applications in the pipeline, better applications, places with a structure that isn’t just some guy named Niall and his army or worker bees. 

At worst, they’ll put him on the compulsory pension plan, he’ll get comfortable, and will inevitably wither away in this blue-lit cube of a basement. 

But for now it’s chin up, stand straight. One foot in front of the other, and don’t think too hard about the stains on the carpet. Niall leads him past row after row of hunched shoulders and C-shaped spines, the glare of a hundred screens in a hundred pairs of glasses, the lifeless _scritch-scratch_ of chair wheels fighting the carpeting. The whole place smells of absolutely nothing, which might be the most unsettling part. 

“There we are,” Niall says as he stops, going to clap his hands then realising where he is at the last moment. “You would’ve learned all the bits and bobs at induction, so I’ll just—“ and then he’s gone, speed-walking rather cartoonishly down the perfectly neat central corridor. 

Louis kicks his backpack under the desk, sits down and lets the chair sink with him. An air conditioning unit whirrs right over his head. 

He’s got his username and password written down on a crinkled post-it in his wallet somewhere, and it takes him a minute to actually find it. Intermittent silences take hold of the room as several people finish their calls at once, and through every one Louis shuffles or creaks or rustles, every sound inexplicably loud as it rises towards the pipes on the ceiling. Louis is not a quiet person, and he hates that this place has already managed to make him self-conscious about it.

He hooks his headphones around his neck, and digs up a couple of other things – the beginners’ guide they went through at induction, a problem-solving booklet, a cheat sheet of Impressive Facts About The Company, and his stupid light-up water bottle, which was a gift from Liam. Louis definitely does not enjoy having a little green diode tell him that he’s hydrated enough, thank you very much. 

“Oooh,” comes a whisper from somewhere to his right, and then nothing else. He blinks, thinking he might have imagined it. 

“I have one of those at home,” the whisper says again, and Louis is forced to reluctantly turn. They’re not meant to Converse. It’s Frowned Upon, as was repeatedly emphasized to them. But that’s just—such a stupid thing to say. 

So Louis turns. And a sense of impending doom immediately settles over him. 

There are a few empty desks in-between them, but right there, on the other end of Louis’s row, is a pair of the greenest eyes he’s ever seen. They’re attached to a person, of course, but he’s—

“So convenient,” the Person whispers, and grins a grin that has his front teeth poking out, the left corner of his mouth curling in a way that Louis finds disturbingly, panic-inducingly attractive. “Careful that you don’t get too used to it, though. I swear I forget to drink completely when I don’t have it handy and beeping at me.” 

He’s got—wavy hair, curling at the ends, a mop of it that his headphones push into his face, and the way he holds himself, the way the overhead lighting paints him paler than he must really be except for the colour of his eyes, the pink of his lips—

His shirt is a vintage one, a 1972 Led Zeppelin tour that seems to genuinely be from the 70s, no cartoon pickle in sight. In this context, that too is attractive. 

“Harry,” the Person whispers, waving across instead of trying to extend a hand across those miles of space, and Louis is unspeakably grateful for that. _Harry_ looks like he’d be one of those people that run warm, and at this point that might be all it takes to just ruin Louis right here. “Did you just start?” 

Louis, remembering momentarily how to use his hands, waves his beginners’ guide in the air. 

“Yeah,” he says, fighting every instinct to dip his chin, incline his head, turn his entire body towards Harry. This is _not_ it, as Liam would say. Louis has flirted with coworkers before, and it’s never ended in anything other than misery. Maybe once one of his million other job applications pans out, he could—

Well. Invite Harry out for a drink, maybe, but right as he thinks that Harry adjusts his headphones, and about a million rings glint in the artificial light, at least one on each finger. People get married at their age. Harry might be one of those people. 

“I’m Louis,” he remembers to say, eventually, whispering even though someone’s just a started a rather enthusiastic call behind them. “Pleasure.” 

For fuck’s sake. 

“All mine,” Harry replies, his grin only getting wider if such a thing is possible. “I’ve got to—get on the thing, or the boss is going to notice, but good luck!” and he turns away before Louis has a chance to reply, his profile outlined sharp and somewhat perfect by the blue light of his screen. 

Louis logs on. Settles the headphones over his ears. Quashes down this giddy, dizzying, panicky thing that takes root and grows, wild, in his chest. 

So—Harry’s attractive. 

And Louis is starved for touch and interaction and, it seems, for that specific brand of cheek that Harry showed him when he smiled.

Great.

*

So the thing about call centres is, you get to talk a lot – but only to people who don’t want to talk to you.

Which, if you think about it, stands to reason. Louis was expecting it. He just didn’t expect to hate it as much as he does. 

The only person he’d_ want_ to talk to – the only one standing out from the dead-eyed, pasty-faced crowd – is off limits, because the first rule of the call centre is you don’t talk at the call centre. Harry had broken the rule on that first day, but not on any day since, and every single time Louis walks into the place without anyone noticing or giving even a fleeting semblance of a shit, he tries to convince himself that it’s for the best. 

And yet, every day, he brings his stupid beeping water bottle and puts it on his desk, right where Harry can see. He even lets it turn red a couple of times, in hopes that it could be a conversation starter, but every time it happens and he turns to Harry feeling a tentative hope, he finds him turned to the screen, his chin propped up with a heavily ringed hand. 

But the thing is, he’s hardly ever on the phone. And the actual first rule of the call centre, Louis supposes, is to dial a number and talk to the miserable bastard on the other end. 

“That’s not that weird,” Liam tells him over the phone a couple of weeks in, while Louis is unwisely using his ten-minute bathroom break for a fag in the back alley. “He might not even do the same thing as you. They can’t have that many people selling—what is it you sell?” 

Louis rolls his eyes skyward, grateful for the vaguely blue colour overhead instead of a million ventilation pipes. “Double glazing. Horan Windows, no more wind blows!” 

Liam is silent for a little too long. “That was disgusting,” he says finally. “Please don’t ever use that voice again.” 

“But Liam dear,” Louis says, relaxing, appreciating anew the fact that he can still form sentences outside of Call Scripts and Recommended Responses. “This is who I am now.” 

“Disgusting,” Liam repeats, but a smile comes through in his voice. “Also, stop trying to make conversation with people while you’re both on the clock. Wait for a lunch break.” 

Which is somewhat obvious, and yet also something that had not occurred to Louis before – mainly because tends to spend his lunches sucking in semi-fresh air next to this very food waste bin and downing cigarettes instead of food. Which is absolutely healthy, and not at all a concern. 

“I guess,” he says, mournfully crushing his cigarette filter against the wall and throwing it in the empty pickle jar standing on the stoop for ashtray purposes. “We already had lunch today, though.” 

“Then do it tomorrow?” says Liam, in a manner one would normally use to talk to a toddler. “You work there, Louis. You go there every day. This is your full-time job.” 

“Yeah,” Louis says, feeling the corner of his mouth turn down of its own volition. He look at the sky one last time, a grey mass swirling on the horizon that will probably pour rain as soon as he steps out of the building after work. “Not for long, though.” 

They sigh in unison. Louis spots Niall powerwalking down the corridor and ends the call, finding himself very nearly crestfallen at saying goodbye to someone who actually wanted to speak to him. 

Back inside, he finds his desk the way he left it, with a little red pop-up on the computer screen warning him that he’s been idle too long. Down the row of still inexplicably empty chairs, Harry sits, another old tour shirt with a gaping collar slipping down his left shoulder. He’s got one long leg tucked under him, chewing on an orange-varnished fingernail, and he’s—eating? 

Second rule of the call centre: you absolutely cannot eat at the call centre outside the half hour dedicated for lunch. And yet Harry’s twirling a fork between the fingers of his left hand, chewing pensively on a swiss chard leaf (which has water on it, and tiny droplets of it stay behind on Harry’s bottom lip, and—focus, Louis, focus—) 

Niall’s unmistakable, erratic steps come closer from behind them, and Louis wishes he could do _something_ to warn Harry. He tries discreetly waving a hand in his periphery, but Harry’s absorbed in his salad and whatever’s going on on his computer screen, and he doesn’t give any indication that he sees Louis’s desperate attempts to save him from being disciplined. 

Louis considers throwing a pen, but before he can find one, Niall is upon them, hips wiggling, elbows swinging. 

“Louis,” he says, whispers as always. “All right?” 

“Sure,” Louis scrambles, settling his headphones around his neck and trying to pretend they’ve been there the whole time. He accidentally slaps himself on the cheek in the process, and there’s probably some sort of metaphor in that that he doesn’t particularly want to delve into. “Just, um—just came back from my ten minutes, already on it, boss,” and he blindly clicks around his desktop hoping to catch the red warning window and close it. 

Niall’s eyes narrow. For all the ridiculous wiggling he does when he walks, his stillness is a lot more memorable in that it makes Louis want to physically cower. 

“Sure,” says Niall, and swallows so pointedly his Adam’s apple hits the buttoned-up collar of his polo shirt. “Good work so far, Louis,” he says, in a tone that indicates the exact opposite, “and you’re due a review next week, don’t forget. First month with the company, half your probationary period already over, good golly! Time flies.” 

Then he lifts his chin, lets his gaze flit over Harry and, without another word, resumes his afternoon powerwalk. 

Louis, perhaps a little belatedly, gets the feeling that something is going on. 

*

They don’t speak at lunch, in the end – though it’s not for lack of trying. Louis deliberately forgets his cigs and all but forces himself to actually visit the break room during lunch, standing in the corner and observing his dead-faced coworkers staring into their phones. 

But, after a few days of this and not a single glimpse of that by-now familiar grinning face, it becomes apparent that Harry prefers eating at his desk (where it’s still very much not allowed). 

Liam suggests that maybe it isn’t meant to be after all, but Louis stubbornly takes his lunch breaks for another two weeks before gives in. He goes back to smoking, the back alley unchanged and blessedly empty. 

And on one such day, as he’s stretching the limits of his mid-morning toilet break and lighting up his second cigarette in a row, someone stumbles and stops in the doorway. 

“Oh,” they say, and although that’s the first word he’s addressed towards Louis since the day they met, Louis immediately identifies it as Harry’s voice. “Louis.” 

Louis doesn’t _shudder_. He might tremble a little like some kind of virgin fairytale maiden, but his hands definitely stay steady, and he definitely doesn’t get cigarette ash all over the tip of his shoe. 

He takes a breath, and sends up a quick prayer that the headphones didn’t mess his hair up too badly. Then he turns around. 

“Harry,” he says, light, keeping his voice as steady as he can. It wouldn’t do for Harry to hear that Louis has been practically gagging just to speak to him for over a month. “No bathroom break for you?” 

His head feels fuzzy all of a sudden, empty, as he scrambles for something neutral, something normal, something that will make Harry want to have a conversation. 

He used to not overthink things, once upon a time. 

“Can’t,” Harry says, and the grin comes out. “I have a date.” 

A cog somewhere in Louis’s brain gets caught, making an immediate headache explode right in the middle of his forehead. It’s then that he notices Harry is holding an open tupperware. 

“In here?” Louis asks, stretching his arm out to indicate the alley, which they share with multiple drinking establishments, a barber’s, and a Chunky Chicken. It’s become a little harder to breathe, and Harry’s voice echoes in his head; date, _date_, datedatedatedate. “Doesn’t scream ‘romantic’ to me.” 

The grin turns into a giggle, and Harry looks at him with his eyes soft and open. Louis’s heart swoops. 

“I don’t get to choose the location,” Harry says, feigning sad, and crouches down inside the doorway. There’s a perfectly good step right in front of him that he could sit on and share with Louis, and Louis is a little offended that he won’t. “I just show up where I’m told.” 

Louis can see into the tupperware now, not that he’s looking. It’s some kind of unidentifiable brown mass, mixed with something that’s hopefully rice. What—

“There they are,” Harry says, and his eyes catch a rare ray of sunlight that’s trying to slant inside, shining in his face. “Here, darlings.” 

Louis turns to look in the same direction – and then has to hold back a sound that’s half-laughter, half enormous sigh of relief. 

Milling around the bottom step is a gaggle of street cats, in shades of brown and grey and orange, their tails up in the air as they stare through Louis and straight at Harry. There’s one in the front that is almost unspeakably small, only a fraction bigger than the palm of Louis’s hand, and its tiny pink mouth is open on a meow. 

“Here,” Harry shakes his container, and leans forward to set it on the top step, right next to where Louis is sitting. Still, he doesn’t actually cross the threshold. “Here, Mick. Stevie. Bono, what are _you_doing here, old man?” 

Louis puts his half-smoked cigarette out on the concrete under his feet and watches, in quiet fascination, as the cats form a single-file line and hop up the steps. One breaks away to come investigate him instead, curling around his calf. It’s a big cat, with droopy eyes and silver flecks in its dark fur that catch the light. There are faint light circles around its eyes, which leave Louis with the impression that he’s currently meeting Bono.

“Hello,” he tries, and scratches a fairly neutral spot on Bono’s back, but even that turns out to be too much. Bono hops up onto Louis’s thigh, and from there steps delicately down to follow the rest of his herd in the direction of food. 

Louis turns back towards the doorway, towards Harry. He’s crouching, his chin tipped forward, hair falling in soft tangles to obscure most of his face. He reaches out a ringed hand here and there, running soft fingers along bumpy street cat spines as his friends eat their fill. His jaw is sharp and shadowed as he tilts his head, but the look in his eyes really sets Louis’s hands shaking this time. 

He’d make a perfect photo like this, Louis thinks, a photo out of time. Turn it black and white, and they could display it in a museum as an exclusive snapshot of a rockstar from the 70s. 

Louis is in entirely too deep. 

“They come here often?” he asks, for something to fill the silence, but mostly because of the very real danger that Harry might get up and go back to work, and then it’ll be another four weeks until their next conversation. 

“Every day,” Harry looks up at him, his left cheek hugging a dimple. “We’ve been friends a while.” 

Louis can tell from the way they let Harry touch them, as if he was so familiar he might as well not be there at all. 

“Sorry we haven’t gotten to talk much, by the way,” he says then, and Louis freezes a little, afraid he’s given himself away. “It’s been busy, you know, what with,” he waves a hand in the air, “the winter coming on, and all. Been making sales left and right.” 

Louis bites back his first response, which is to bring up the fact that he hasn’t heard Harry on an actual call in at least a few days. That is very much not the point. The point is to dazzle Harry with his incredibly likeable personality. 

“Wish that was me,” he tries, grinning, and Harry grants him an easy smile back. “Some days it feels like I’ll never get into it.” 

Harry shakes his head. “It takes a while, all the bosses know that. You’re doing great.” 

Louis very much doubts that. “You been working here long, then?” 

“Oh, you know,” Harry says, and rapidly averts his eyes, watching with laser focus as the last bits of food leave the bowl in front of him. “Ages. Feels like forever, really.” 

It’s already felt like forever to Louis. 

“Does it get any easier?” 

Harry contemplates that, smiling a little as the tiny cat ambles over to him and bats at the bit of knee poking out from his torn jeans. “Yeah,” he says, finally, a strangely serious answer. “Definitely. You’ll be a pro in no time.” 

Louis’s fingers itch for another smoke, for some clarity. Harry’s knees are already straightening, getting ready to leave. He swallows what little dignity he had in the first place, and turns up his smile a little. 

“D’you have any tips?”

*

“You did _not_ask him that,” Liam groans, obviously already knowing the answer. “Come on, Louis, you used to, like—_pull_ in uni. You used to be smooth.”

Louis takes a sip of his beer, resigned. “I’m old now, Liam dear,” he says, pointedly stretching his legs out from underneath him because his knee is starting to hurt. “We’re both old. This is what happens when you’ve got one foot in the grave.” 

Liam reaches out to slap him, but he’s too far, so he settles for poking his toes into Louis’s side instead. 

“I’ll kill you,” he says, with no threat behind it whatsoever, but Louis appreciates the sentiment. “This has to stop, Louis. Just—ask him out, I don’t know. _Do_ something.” 

“Were you listening? I did do something.” 

“You had one conversation,” Liam says, and he has no business sounding that pitying, thank you very much. “About your job.” 

“It’s a start,” Louis says, but even the ceiling of his living room seems to be looking back at him disapprovingly. “That place just—kills me, Liam. It’s like a fucking tomb, I don’t know how to be a normal person in there.” 

“All the more reason to ask him on a date,” Liam replies, gentling. He scoots up on the sofa, closer to Louis, slumping into him like they’re in halls again, nursing hangovers and watching 10am reruns of the X Factor on the common room TV. “As for the job—“ 

“You’ve always got openings, yes, I know,” Louis interrupts, the bitterness of the beer suddenly burning in his mouth. “And you know I want to find something myself.” 

Liam runs a hand through Louis’s hair, scratching at the crown of his head. “Yeah,” he says, but it’s his Professional Life Coach Voice, which would make Louis resent him if he was anybody else. “And you will. Just—if you want to get out of there in the meantime.” 

“I’ll consider it,” Louis says, and then actually allows himself to consider it. Briefly. He’s probably not that desperate yet. “But I can’t leave before I do something about the Harry situation.” 

Liam smiles, rather obnoxiously. “There we go,” he says, like this was his intention all along, and knowing him it very well might have been. “You can start slow, you know. Invite a group of people. Go get a pint on a Friday, and before you know it you’re having a candlelit dinner someplace fancy, just the two of you.” 

“Is this really what you do for a living? This is how you give people advice?” Louis asks, already ducking Liam’s slap-happy hands. 

If anyone asks, he’ll vehemently deny that he’s going to take every last bit of Liam’s suggestion.

*

He tries the Rick and Morties first, although it pains him, and he doesn’t actually know any of their names. He’s technically not allowed to leave the computer during working hours, and they wouldn’t talk to him anyway, so he has to spend a few days strategically lurking in corners, starting conversations at the urinal, intercepting people as they leave the break room.

Unsurprisingly, he has no luck. He gets a few polite “no”s and a whole lot of uncomprehending stares. 

He moves on to the older people, then, thinking they might have more reasons to want to be drunk. What he neglects to consider that people who’ve worked here for a while are likely to have a decent relationship with the boss.

And so he only gets rejected a couple of times before, one Thursday morning at exactly 7:17, he finds Niall standing behind the front door of the building, arms folded, polo shirt perfectly pressed, and definitely glowering. 

“Morning, boss,” Louis tries, not quite awake and not quite comprehending what’s going on just yet. “How are you?”

“Louis,” Niall replies, in a tone that makes the hair on the back of Louis’s neck stand up. “I’ve heard you’ve been trying to organise a—social.” 

Louis digs his nails into the strap of his backpack. “Not really,” he tries. “Just wanted to see if anyone wants to get a pint after work.” 

Casual, Louis. Be casual. Be cool.

“Why?” Niall asks, which might be the one thing Louis was not expecting him to say. 

“Uh,” he says intelligently, and notes that they’ve begun moving towards the office. “Just—being friendly, boss. I still don’t really know anyone here.” 

“Well,” Niall says, holding the door open for Louis but somehow making it seem like the exact opposite of courtesy, “we don’t really do that here, Louis. I’m sure you know by now that you can’t talk in the call centre, so we discourage fraternizing to keep that to a minimum.” 

Louis’s first response is, _well, that’s psychopathic_, but he’s got an overdue gas bill to pay, and he also spots the top of Harry’s head over the sea of monitors, so he manages to keep his mouth shut. 

“So, uh,” he says, as they come up to his desk and he slows to make it very clear he’s not going anywhere near Niall’s office, “am I not allowed to do that, then?” 

Niall’s bent his arms by his sides, ready to power walk. Not for the first time, Louis wonders how he became this way. 

“Technically, you can do whatever you want in your free time,” Niall says, and although he’s clearly in a strop, there seems to be something quietly amused playing about the corners of his mouth. “But as your boss,” and he draws himself up a little as he says that, “I’d discourage it.” 

And he wiggles away. 

Louis is only marginally more awake than he was ten minutes ago, despite the telling off; he sits down in a slight daze, his mind sluggishly kicking into gear as he tries to figure out _what_ in fuck’s name just happened. 

“You okay?” comes a soft whisper from his right. 

Harry’s wearing a blouse today, semi-sheer and vaguely vampiric. It’s very 18th century, and very Harry in a way that makes the anxious knot in Louis’s chest loosen almost immediately. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, smiling, entirely off-kilter. “Just—you know.” 

Harry pulls his headphones off the back of his neck. Lays them on his desk, and then turns to face Louis, his body folded in his chair lanky and pretzely and perfect.

“Don’t mind Niall,” he says, smiles softer than usual. “He’s just an old grouch. He can’t actually stop you from going out after work.” 

“No, I know,” says Louis, placing his stupid water bottle on the desk and typing his login info in letter by letter with a pinkie. “I think.” 

And then he stops, and he thinks of Liam’s soft encouragement, of Harry’s grin the first day they met, of an unusually sunny morning on the back steps surrounded by a gaggle of cats. 

He thinks of all those things, and looks at Harry’s lavender-painted fingernails picking at a thread on his jeans—thinks, I’m going to get out of here soon. And thinks, I can’t leave him behind without trying.

“Hey Harry,” he says, as Horan Windows wishes him good morning on the computer screen. “I haven’t asked you yet.” 

“Huh?” Harry blinks. 

“I haven’t asked if you’re interested,” Louis shrugs a shoulder, the perfect picture of casual when he’s anything but. “I was thinking tomorrow night. Actually made some sales this week, so it’s my treat. I think. I’ll have to check my account, but—you know. In concept.” 

“Interested?” Harry repeats, and he seems frozen, his restless fingers lying, still, on his knees. 

“In going for a pint,” Louis says, rather slower than he needs to. The sense of wrongness that’s been clinging to his spine since he saw Niall in the foyer burrows deeper. “With—I guess just me, now. I promise I can hold a half-decent conversation.” 

“I,” Harry starts, and then pauses, and takes a breath that makes something new bloom on his face. Something like—wonder, like awe, that has his gorgeous mouth dropping open a little. Like nobody’s ever asked him to the pub. “I would love to.” 

And Louis feels something bloom too, a shifting behind his ribs, his heart jumping to make room. 

But then Harry blinks, and his face falls. He turns back to his computer. 

“But, uh,” he clears his throat, no longer looking Louis in the eye, hunching his shoulders like a shell, “I don’t think I can. Sorry.” 

He doesn’t offer another explanation, and Louis gets the sense that asking wouldn’t yield an answer. He wishes more than ever that he found it easier to bridge the space between them, to offer a hand, a reassuring touch, there even if Harry wouldn’t accept it. 

“No problem,” he says, stubbornly denying his voice when it wants to tremble, wants to come out of his throat choked and hurt. “I don’t have much of a life, so just let me know if you change your mind.” 

He’s going to have to learn how to leave Harry behind, then, whenever he manages to finally get out of here. 

It feels wrong – to already be missing him while he’s still sitting right here.

*

Generally speaking, their workday finishes at four. In practice, once it hits four o’clock, Louis finds himself logging out and then spinning around on his chair, watching his coworkers pack up. One by one, the colours on the monitors fade and then die. Somehow, it leaves the room looking even more oppressive and uncomfortable than it is during the day.

The clock inches towards five. Louis closes a hand around his water bottle. Liam promised he’d pay for a takeaway tonight, because he’s truly and deeply lovely at heart and also makes a hell of a lot more money than Louis does, all of which means he should get out and try to catch his bus and go home to his best friend, but—

But. 

Harry’s still here. 

And the thing is, he’s been looking at Louis throughout the day. Intermittently, and he was trying very badly to be subtle about it, but Louis has spent so long observing him from afar that the slightest shift in his expression grabs Louis’s attention. 

That’s how he knows, and the knowing seems to have glued him to his chair in some kind of misplaced anticipation.

At 5:15, he contemplates getting up. He and Harry are the only two people left, and Louis’s computer has gone to sleep because he hasn’t touched it in so long. 

And then—then, Harry does it again. A flick of the eyes, there and gone immediately, but before he can hide himself away again Louis catches his eyes—and, for the first time today, realises how upset Harry looks. 

He’d kind of wanted to make this a game of chicken, but all of that flies out of the window between one of Harry’s sad blinks and the next. 

“Are you okay?” falls out of Louis on its own, echoing along the empty rows of desks, under the whirring, pipe-streaked ceiling. 

Harry takes off his headphones. Bites his lip, and gets up slow, determined, deliberate. 

“I want to go for a pint with you,” he says, with enormous gravity. “I _want_ to.” 

Louis blinks. “Okay? Sure, yeah, that’s—“ 

“No,” Harry interrupts, and steps closer, sinking into the chair directly next to Louis’s. “I—look, I’m not sure how to explain this.”

This up close, his hands are shaking, and he’s bitten his lip so hard it’s still dotted with the pale half-moon impressions of his teeth. 

Louis can’t actually help himself, now that he’s here, and he reaches out a hand, squeezes Harry’s knee. He gets a smile in return that doesn’t quite reach anywhere else on Harry’s face. 

“I’m—old,” Harry starts, just about the last thing Louis was expecting him to say. “Like—very old.” 

“You’re like 25,” Louis raises his eyebrows. 

“Yeah,” says Harry, and then a spark of mischief plays around the corner of his mouth. “But how long have I been 25?” 

Louis hates that he recognizes the reference—and then he _recognizes_ the reference. 

“Uh,” he says. 

“I’m not a vampire,” Harry says, and it’s kind of funny to hear from a man with a massively ruffled blouse buttoned up to his neck. “I—can’t really explain what I am. But I _want_ to go out with you.” 

The way he says it, his voice deep and throaty around the word, makes it sound like he hasn’t wanted anything in a long time. Louis feels so hopelessly weak for it that he considers not questioning it and just saying yes, anything you want, anything with you. 

But he’d like to think he’s got some brain cells left to his name. 

“Why couldn’t you?” he asks, very aware of his hand still on Harry’s knee, of—of Harry’s hand coming down to cover his own, so light he barely feels it. His fingers settle on the thin skin between Louis’s knuckles, soft with wonder. 

Harry takes a breath so deep Louis feels it in his fingertips. 

“I don’t leave here,” he gets out, staring at the ground. “Ever, I mean. I haven’t left in—decades? Maybe longer. I don’t remember when this place was built.” 

Louis’s stomach twists. He relishes the feeling of leaving work maybe more than any other feeling, ever – seeing daylight, breathing air that hasn’t been run through a ventilation system half a dozen times, being able to look around and not see walls. 

Harry hasn’t felt that for—a lot longer than Louis has even been alive. 

Which might take a while to wrap his mind around.

“Niall likes to have us all in one place.” 

And of course, of course Niall is some kind of—undead criminal mastermind, or whatever. “Us?” 

“Almost everyone who works here,” Harry smiles, apologetic. “Not everybody, but most people. He’s got a charm cast on the place so we don’t age as long as we’re inside, but if we went out…” 

“Would you turn to dust or something?” Louis asks, and his mind has gone from spinning straight to giving him a violent, pounding headache as he tries to comprehend. 

Harry shrugs a shoulder, the outline of one of his tattoos moving beneath the blouse. He makes it look more nonchalant than it actually is.

“I don’t know,” he says, worrying at his lip with the hand that isn’t – still – on Louis’s. “Like I said, Niall doesn’t like it. As in, uh. Actively discourages it. And you get used to being here, and then the longer you sit behind this stupid desk, the more afraid you are of what’s out there.” 

Louis wonders if hugging is on the cards. He wants to wrap Harry up in his arms for a good twenty minutes, and then go find Niall and give him a piece of his mind. 

“It’s not—prison, or anything,” Harry says, as if he’s reading Louis’s thoughts, and come to think of it, maybe he is. “It’s more of a family thing.” 

Louis raises a dubious eyebrow. 

“We’re from all sorts of different places. Different times. He likes to know where we are. Keep us safe.” 

“Has he ever heard of mobiles?” Louis asks, managing not to squeak with indignation on Harry’s behalf – on everybody’s behalf. No wonder they’re so utterly fucking miserable all the time. 

Harry looks at him, now, and doesn’t turn away again. Louis thought he’s seen him with his guard down, if only for a moment, but he comes to realise right there that he had been wholly and entirely wrong. _Now_ Harry’s face is an open book, and Louis wants nothing more than to figure this out, right here. If he has to keep coming here to share a pint or a morning coffee or maybe someday a kiss with Harry across a threshold, then—fuck, he’ll do it. 

“There was an incident,” Harry says, smiling in earnest this time. “A few incidents, actually, but we had one in the 1870s that was bad.”

The 1870s. Huh. 

“And I’ve been so—I spent ten years inside when we moved in here, watching the world through a window, and then I thought – what if it’s not the way I think it is? I can’t see everything through newspapers, or the internet, or through people who come here from the outside, so what if I’m too far removed? It looks like so many people out there. And bikes. And the _cars_, God.” 

Louis reaches out his other hand, searching for Harry’s free one, pulling it away from where he’s started picking at the skin of his lip. He takes it. Figures he might as well go all in and intertwines their fingers. Harry’s palm is soft and dry; warm. Entirely human.

“But I want to,” Harry says again, and then he looks down until his lashes hide his eyes. “With you.” 

Louis almost falls out of his chair. He feels an indomitable urge to scream, but he can do that later, once he’s had Liam pinch him to make sure this isn’t an elaborate hallucination.

“Yeah?” is all that comes out of him at present, and even that is barely there, more of a choked-off sigh. 

Harry looks up. “If—if you still want to.” 

“If I—oh my God. Come on,” and he stands up, tightening the hold he has on Harry’s hand. 

Harry follows, half a step behind Louis as they make their way through empty cubicles and towards a familiar door. 

“Now?” Harry asks, still a little hunched, but his eyes are alive. “We’re going now?” 

“No,” Louis replies, leaning forward to push the door open. The back alley opens in front of them same as always, mud-coloured and unassuming, with a pervasive fried chicken odour hanging in the air. “We’re just going to take a step.” 

He grabs Harry’s other hand, too, so they’re facing one another, and then walks backwards. The hell of his shoe hits against the raised bottom of the doorframe, and he steps over it easily, one foot then the other, outside. 

They stay like that for a minute, the waning evening sun in Louis’s back, Harry a tall silhouette in the shadows. 

Harry draws up his shoulders. “One small step for man,” he says, and then, in one breath, lets out both the tension and an amused huff at his own joke. Louis turns a word around in his mind that starts with an L and ends with an E and definitely won’t be allowed to take shape until they’re much, much further into—well. Whatever this turns out to be. 

In fact, he can’t even begin to contemplate the enormity of it all, or he might do something stupid like collapse from feelings. 

“Come on, then,” Louis says, trying for teasing, but gently. “Daylight’s going. I’m pretty sure I’ll get eaten by rats where I stand the minute it gets dark.” 

Harry laughs. Releases one final sigh, and the tense coil of his shoulders drops just so.

“Don’t let go,” he tells the ground, and Louis squeezes his hands in time with the thump that his heart gives. 

“Of course I won’t,” he says, and lets his voice say everything he can’t quite put into words yet. “Come on. If they could do it on the Moon—” 

And then Harry looks up. He looks Louis in the eye; beams a smile that lodges, painfully beautiful, in some heretofore empty place in Louis’s chest. 

And, resolute, he steps out onto the concrete. 

_~fin_


End file.
